When and where to see A3, comet of the year?

A new celestial event is approaching for the sky gazers after the remarkable Total Solar Eclipse and Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) that brightened up skies in Western Europe and North America.

Sky gazers will not see a rare space event that involves Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3), which is in the process of growing a tail and increasing its luminosity in the night, according to BBC’s Sky and Telescope.

The orbit of this comet A3 is between Mars and Jupiter — taking 80,000 years to complete — and could only be seen with a telescope, for now.

Comets are hard to predict however, astronomers after studying their paths suggest where they could be seen. According to experts, this celestial body is set to be luminous during October and would possibly become as bright as Venus.

This is how it would become the “comet of the year” after coming from the body called the Oort Cloud — hosting millions of comets.

The cosmic snowball was first discovered in February 2023 by both South Africa’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope and China’s Tsuchinshan Observatory, according to Forbes.

It will make its closest flyby to the Sun on October 10, 2024, and will be visible from the northern hemisphere.

The A3 comet could possibly be seen with the naked eye during October and November.